1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for optically reading characters printed on a check or other processed medium, and to a character recognition apparatus that is embodied in, or adapted to work with, the optical reading apparatus. The invention also relates to a method for reading characters printed on a check or other processed medium, and to a program for implementing this character reading method. The invention further relates to a magnetic ink character reading apparatus that includes the optical reading apparatus, and to a POS terminal apparatus that also includes the optical reading apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Business checks and personal checks (collectively referred to below as simply checks) are commonly used to make payment in a variety of circumstances, for example, in business-to-business transactions as well as for retail purchases in stores and restaurants. Checks are particularly common in the United States and Europe. A bank code, account number, and other information are printed with magnetic ink characters at a specific position (typically a line along the bottom) on each check. When a check is used for payment in a retail store, for example, the user (checking account holder) writes the name of the payee, the check amount in both numbers and words, and then signs the check before giving the check to the store as payment for a purchase. The store can then read the bank code and account number printed in magnetic ink characters, send the read data to the bank or other financial institution or clearing house for verification, and thus know if the presented check is valid or not. If the check is valid, the store prints an endorsement on the back of the check and thus accepts the check as payment.
The bank code and account number information printed in magnetic ink characters are required to settle check payment transactions and must therefore be correctly read. If the magnetic ink characters are incorrectly recognized, transaction processing will proceed based on incorrect data, potentially resulting in major post-processing problems such as the wrong account, that is, an account other than the account on which the check is actually drawn, being debited for payment. Correctly reading the magnetic ink characters is therefore essential when processing check transactions. The character recognition technologies used in magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) readers have therefore been tweaked to improve the recognition rate and reduce character recognition errors.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. H7-182448 provides technology for improving the recognition rate by also using an optical character recognition (OCR) reader to optically read characters that could not be read magnetically.
Considering the potential for erroneously recognizing the content even though the characters can be read, Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. 2000-259764 provides technology for reducing the false recognition rate by comparing the recognition output of the MICR reader and the recognition output of the OCR reader and accepting as correct only those results that are the same.
A problem with adding a process for reading characters using an optical reading apparatus is that more time is required for the reading process. Moreover, in order to ensure that all of the magnetic ink characters are optically read, a larger area than the actual area of the magnetic ink characters must be processed. A larger area must be processed because of variations, for example, in the printing position of the magnetic ink characters, variations in check dimensions, and variations in the dimensions of the MICR reader. Applying the character recognition process to a larger area, however, necessarily increases the time required to perform the process.